How can someone forgive when the injury is insurmountable? Why should we forgive?
Rev. RAY INNEN PARCHELO is a novice Tendai priest and founder of the Red Maple Sangha, the first lay Buddhist community in Eastern Ontario.
The question seems to imply there is some sort of cut-off point of forgiveness, as if a certain class of acts qualifies for forgiveness and others are exempt or excluded. This is a misunderstanding of forgiveness.
Forgiveness has nothing to do with the form, seriousness or characteristics of a given act. Forgiveness is a capacity we hold as humans.
Forgiveness reflects our capacities as spiritual beings, rather than being something generated by an act. The reasons we might forgive some act also have to do with the value of forgiveness to the forgiver, perhaps even more than for the forgiven.
Both spiritually and therapeutically, it is beneficial to extend forgiveness toward those who have offended or injured us. From a Buddhist psychological perspective, there is tremendous psychic energy expended in sustaining the resentment, anger and outrage at an offence.
This energy limits our capacity and functioning, our ability to express the best of what we are. Forgiveness frees us from that contraction and allows that energy to be available for our true purposes.
Of equal importance to extending forgiveness is finding the humility to apologize for one’s misdeeds, that is, to ask for forgiveness from those we have offended. This concludes the interaction, as it were, rather than leaving it as a gaping wound.
When there is both apology and forgiveness, both parties are then able to move forward. Forgiveness and apology are activities that are reminders that none of us is perfect, we are capable of acting in hurtful ways, capable of bringing suffering to others. They are both parts of the mending and healing that are necessary for us to surmount what may have seemed insurmountable.
When we forgive, we return ourselves to a position to participate fully and openly in our lives and relationships.